The previous Park Geun-hye government mismanaged 1.53 trillion won ($1.36 billion) budget for research and development of healthcare products and picked inappropriate researchers for some of the state-supported studies, a lawmaker said Tuesday.

According to Rep. Gwon Mi-hyeog of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, who received a report from the Korea Health Industry Development Institute and the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, the previous administration supported a total of 1.53 trillion won for 1,986 projects under the five-year plan for R&D in healthcare between 2013 and 2017.

With the supported budget, the KHIDI developed 44 medical devices, two medicines, and two biomedicines during the five years.

Gwon criticized the institute for poor performance, saying the budget was large enough to support all of the stages of product development, including expenses at private companies and universities for academic and industrial cooperation. Such industrial R&D budget is more substantial than R&D budget for basic science.

She also pointed out that the institute chose unfit researchers and inappropriately reviewed their works. Some project assessment commission members applied for a researcher position for a project, and some advisors participated in the study they advised, she said.

For example, an advisor to the institute’s R&D strategy committee for Oriental medicine received 2 billion won in government support to carry out four studies. Nine out of the 11 advisors of the regenerative medicine committee won the government approval to carry out state-funded research works.

“Now is the time to reconsider whether it is appropriate for the government to give taxpayers’ money to a private company to develop a product,” Gwon said. “It will be more desirable if we support this budget for universities and research institutes to study basic science, which will benefit Korean people and strengthen our country’s growth potential.”

cks@docdocdoc.co.kr

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